Amazon Planet up-5

by Mack Reynolds

  Podner said, “How about me?”

  They both looked at him, impatiently. “Can you handle a shooter?” Halloday rasped.

  “I…I know the theory.”

  “That you’re supposed to point it, and pull the trigger, eh?” Halloday shot a look at Ronny.

  Ronny pulled the gun he had rescued from the bushes and tossed it to the actor. “All right, anybody’s better than nothing. Zen knows how many of them might be there.”

  They hurried down the stairs and to the two-seater hovercar.

  Ronny rapped. “Podner’ll have to sit on your lap.”

  “That’ll make us nice and conspicuous,” Matt growled.

  “Why should we mind being conspicuous?” Podner demanded. “From now on we’ll all on the side of the authorities.”

  “He’s got a point,” Ronny said. “All bets are down, now. Let’s go!”

  The hovercar lifted, only slightly sluggish under the unusual weight, and hummed forward.

  “I think I can remember this,” Ronny growled. “It’s over on the edge of the river.”

  They found the house which wasn’t overly dissimilar to the underground retreat on Heliopolis. They drove past and completely around the edge of the block. The back faced the river. There were small craft tied up there.

  Ronny came to a halt and cased the situation. “Any ideas?” he muttered to Matt.

  Matt looked at him sourly. “You’re supervisor rank. I’m just a full operative. You figure it out. Those Maffeo stutes are just as good with a shooter as we are.”

  Ronny grunted. “Zeke missed me twice.”

  “Third time is lucky,” Matt said dryly.

  Ronny said, “All right, Podner. I’m glad we brought you. Get yourself into a boat. One of those tied up behind the houses either to the right or left of our place. If anybody comes out carrying a shooter, except Matt or me, unlimber that artillery I gave you and keep blasting away. It plies a beam that knocks chunks out of anything it touches.”

  He turned to Matt. “You’ve got your own Model H?”

  “Yes. Happily, I’d hidden my shooter, badge and communicator, Zeke didn’t find them when he overpowered me. He had gone to check with Damon, to find out what to do with me. You let me loose, and when I saw you weren’t following me, I figured you had been nabbed and went on to get my equipment. It wasn’t until later I figured out that if you’d escaped you might go to Patricia O’Gara.’s I made my way over there and came on the scene a few minutes later.”

  “All right, just so you have it. Let’s go!”

  They rounded the corner again. As they walked, Ronny said tightly, “Our only chance is complete surprise. One of us will go over the roofs and down. All these houses evidently have patio gardens inside. The other will burn the front door down and go in that way. One thing. They’re not going to think in terms of taking prisoners. We can’t either.”

  Matt looked at him questioningly.

  Ronny growled, “Every one of this Maffeo gang know the real workings of Section G. We can’t afford to allow any of them to babble, later on.”

  Matt nodded, uncomfortably.

  Ronny said, “Any choice? Over the roof, or through the door?”

  The other said, “You can go over the roof.”

  Ronny snorted. They were approaching their destination, walking rapidly, on the off chance a lookout would spot them. At the door next to the hideout, Ronny said, “Give me a few minutes, then come in shooting.”

  Matt said nothing.

  Ronny flicked his gun from his belt, blasted the door of the neighboring house, cutting a complete ring about the knob. It feel inward and he pushed his way inside.

  There was a hall beyond, and a man hurrying down it, wide-eyed, toward him.

  Ronny striding quickly snapped, “Interplanetary police. There’s a criminal next door. I’m going over the roof to get him. Where’s the stairs?”

  The other bug-eyed him.

  “The stairs!” Ronny roared, making a gesture with the gun.

  “That…that way. What do you mean, Interplanetary Police?”

  Ronny ignored him. He took the stairs three at a time. There was a second story, devoted evidently largely to sleeping quarters and refresher rooms, and then a narrower stairway leading up again. The roof, he decided was probably utilized for sunbathing, contemplation of sunsets, and probably for teenagers necking on a starlit night.

  He came out onto the roof.

  Across from him, a man—it was Zeke!—was peering over the roofs edge, down into the street, and bringing up a short barrelled scrambler.

  Ronny burned a hole in him through which he could have rammed his arm. Zeke tumbled forward, and a moment later the sound of his body, thudding on the street below, came back. And with it, a crash of splintered wood. Evidently, Matt was on his way in.

  Ronny grunted, even as he vaulted the low parapet which separated the two houses. He hurried over to the patio edge and looked down. For the moment, he could see no one below. But even as he began to look up, to locate the stairway, two figures came running from a side-room, dragging at handguns holstered at their sides.

  He brought his own weapon up to eye level and squeezed off with care. They toppled over, all but cut in two.

  The stairs were in approximately the same position as they had been in the house he had just come through. He scurried over to them, instinctively bent low, as men run when under fire.

  He burst the door open and started down.

  Half way up the stairs an unknown, seemingly weaponless, his eyes wide in fear, shot a terrified look up at him. Ronny didn’t lose pace. The other toppled over backward when he shot the right side of his head completely away. He was on the second floor now. He ran completely around it, spotting nothing. The doors were all closed. He could hear the sounds of Matt Halloday’s activities going on below.

  Flinging his shoulder against the last door, Ronny let his momentum take him far into the center of the room. He spun, his gun sweeping. There was nobody present.

  Back into the hall, still at full pace. He took the next room, duplicated his maneuver. The room was empty, but there was a refresher connected with it. He kicked the door open. A man stood in the auto-shower, evidently unaware of the noises in the building, due to the sound of pressured water. At sight of Ronny, he attempted to scramble in the direction of his clothes. Ronny cut him down mercilessly, turned and was gone before the nude bather hit the floor.

  Back into the hall, still running.

  He bashed down the next door. On the bed, bound and gagged, was Pat O’Gara. He didn’t even take the time to grin at her. He was out in the hall again.

  This time the next door but one flew open and two men, guns in hand, came running out.

  He used the Model H weapon as though it was a hose. He had seen them first.

  He kicked in the remaining door on that floor. The room was empty. He headed for the stairs again. Below, there was a shambles. He nearly tripped over one body as he headed for the patio.

  There he found Matt Halloday, struggling to keep on his feet. With his left hand, the Section G operative was holding the stump of his right arm, severed near the elbow.

  “Two of them, one of them Sarpedon, heading for the back. They’ll finish that poor Podner yoke.”

  Ronny shot an agonized look at his colleague, even as he dashed by. Matt was fated to bleed to death in minutes.

  There were sounds ahead of him, offering the direction of his way. Gun at the ready, he sped toward them. He met the two returning, their guns held ready too.

  Ronny Bronston dropped flat, gun hand extended, trigger tight back. The hallway flew apart.

  He stumbled to his feet again, pressed ahead, stumbling through gore, his legs wet with blood. He burst out onto the boat landing.

  There were no boats there. Over to his right, Podner Bates was wavering a gun at him.

  “It’s me!” Ronny barked. “Did any get away?”

  “No,” Podner yell
ed shrilly, his voice on the edge of cracking.

  “Where’re the boats?”

  “I…I sank.them all with the gun when I heard all the noise.”

  Ronny shook his head at him, in admiration. “All right, come on. I’m afraid Matt’s had it.” Without waiting for the actor, he turned and headed back, already feeling the trembling that invariably hit him after extreme action. He mustn’t let the nausea hit him. Matt had to be taken care of—if it wasn’t too late.

  The other Section G operative was sprawled in the garden, ludicrously crushing a bed of the largest pansies Ronny Bronston had ever seen. Ronny dropped his gun and fell to his knees before the wounded man. He rolled him over roughly. To his relief, the severed arm was partially cauterized and bleeding comparative little. He wondered as he worked, what sort of weapon had hit the other.

  He heard Podner Bates coming up behind and called over his shoulder, “Something I can make a tourniquet from. Quick, you damned cloddy!”

  Bates scrambled around, and returned in seconds with a torn piece of cloth and a stick.

  Ronny worked over the fallen man desperately. Podner came back again, a large piece of torn tunic in his hands, part of the cloth bloody.

  “Here,” he said, a bandage.”

  Ronny utilized it, then sat back on his heels. He pulled in a double lungful of air. He said finally, “Pat O’Gara’s up in that room, one door from the left. Top of the stairs. You better go get her, she’s probably scared to death.” There was no response and he looked up.

  The actor was looking greenish about the gills. There were three bodies, in various stages of disintegration, strewn about the patio. The sickening stench of warm blood and flesh was everywhere.

  Ronny said, “All right, I’ll go. Watch Matt.”

  This time his progress up the stairs was slow. His feet dragged. Why had he bothered to worry about Podner’s delicacy? He was as near complete collapse himself. Day was coming to an end. The last twenty-four hours had been the most filled in his life.

  He pushed the door open and made his way to her bed. He sat down on the edge of it and laboriously began to untie her. He took the gag out last.

  Her eyes had been wide on him, taking in the blood on his legs, splattered on his tunic. He felt like an unskilled laborer in a slaughterhouse—and evidently looked and smelled like one. He was too tired to care.

  She began to blurt something.

  “Shut up,” he muttered. “You’re all right. You’re safe.” He stood again and stumbled toward the room’s refresher.

  The door opened before he reached it and a man stepped out. There was a Model H gun in his hand and it was leveled at Ronny’s stomach. There was a sardonic smile on the other’s face.

  “Supervisor Bronston, I assume. The fair-haired boy of Sid Jakes and Ross Metaxa.”

  Ronny’s own gun was out in the garden where he had dropped it while attending Matt.

  He licked dry lips and said wearily, “Damon Kane.”

  “That’s right. Like the Northwest Mounties of legend, you seem to have fouled everything up in the nick of time, you funcker.”

  Ronny looked at him and shook his head, wearily. Even this emergency couldn’t get through his accumulated weariness. He had been going practically all last night and all today into dust, at the top peak of his resources. He hadn’t even completely recovered from his hangover of this morning. He was through.

  “Why not get it over?” he said.

  “Why not?” the Section G renegade snarled. “You’ve flunked this, Bronston. I don’t know how many of my Palermo men you’ve finished off—”

  “All of them,” Ronny grunted. “Get it over with, Kane.”

  “…but I’ve still got all the nucleus I need among the Amazonians. I’ll make a report over my communicator to Sid Jakes, in your name, that’ll have Section G here with in weeks. And when they pull down this phoney socioeconomic system, don’t think I won’t build a new one to my own specifications. We’ll take this planet like Grant took…” As he talked, his finger tightened on the trigger.

  And suddenly the gun exploded, blasting his chest and lower face into nothingness, sending him reeling back into the refresher room from which he had emerged.

  Ronny shook his head.

  “He evidently didn’t know that when Matt Halloday finally realized what was going on, that he simply got in touch with Section G, on his communicator, and had the gun assigned to Damon Kane’s coordinates changed. Anybody trying to fire it, without the correct coordinates just blows the booby trap.”

  He turned to say something to Pat O’Gara, who was sitting upright in bed now, a fist to her mouth, her face ghost-like. But then he felt the mists roll in, and fell to the floor himself. Ronny Bronston awakened in bed.

  It was a clean, light room, and he felt unbelievably clean himself. A woman—who must have been a doctor, she looked like a doctor—said, “You’re awake.”

  “Not very,” he said. “Go away.” And went back to sleep.

  When he awoke again, nothing had changed, save that two persons sat next to his bed and several more stood behind, none of whom he immediately recognized save Major Oreithyia, who for the first time he had seen her, was not in uniform. No, he did recognize the others now. They were members of the committee who had questioned him before he had been taken in to meet the Hippolyte.

  Of the two seated women, one was the Hippolyte herself. However, she wasn’t garbed now in the regal outfit of the palace throne room. She still bore her strength of character in her face, but the air of supreme command was gone. He didn’t recognize the woman seated next to her and it must have shown in his eyes.

  The Hippolyte said, “This is the Myrine of Lybia.”

  Ronny nodded, he had guessed, even as she spoke. The Hippolyte said, “Are you strong enough to talk? The doctor says your wound is doing nicely.”

  He hadn’t even known he had been wounded. He wondered which of the enemy had managed to hit him. It didn’t surprise him. In the heat of combat you often copped one without feeling it until later.

  “I’m all right,” he said.

  The Hippolyte said, “The Schirra is still in orbit. Evidently, the satellite which houses the UP Embassy has some personnel which wishes to transfer back to Earth. Do you think you can undertake the reembark and return to Earth with a message from Amazonia to the Department of Interplanetary Justice and whatever other officials are involved in this sweeping scheme to prod all man-settled planets into progress?”

  Ronny looked at the two of them warily. He shook his head. “I don’t think I have a clear enough picture as yet, to give a comprehensive report.”

  The Hippolyte nodded. “You will have. In actuality, it’s all very simple. Ask us what you will. We’ll cooperate. The Myrine has come all the way from Lybia to join in my final discussion with you.”

  Ronny looked at the Lybian Amazon head. She held the same dignity as did the Hippolyte, but was evidently prone to hold her peace.

  He said. “It was all show, wasn’t it?”

  “Largely.”

  “Podner mentioned that you have no police. You have no armies either, have you? Neither one of you?”

  “That is correct,” the Hippolyte said. “We haven’t had for almost two centuries.”

  Ronny shook his head, again. “When I was given this assignment, I went to the Octagon library. I checked everything it had on Amazonia, which was precious little. A great deal of it dealt with the founding of your organization, its original principles, the things you did on Earth to recruit members. It held all the bylaws of your organization, all the plans you expected to put through once you landed on your colony planet. All the pamphlets and books dealing with the Amazon movement, and why it was rebelling against man’s domination.”

  Myrine opened her mouth for the first time, coming forth with nothing more than a chuckle.

  “That was over two centuries ago,” the Hippolyte said. “I think we’ll save time, Ronald Bronston, if I ta
ke over. You see, at first I imagine we were something like the Mormons who settled Utah back in the old times. We had a multitude of ideas, principles, beliefs, and a great deal of faith in what, as we look back at it today, was obviously extremism. But we were no incompetents. And like the Mormons we quickly became pragmatic. Just as they gave up their polygamy when it proved impractical, we gave up the domination of one sex over the other. Not so quickly, perhaps, but step by step.”

  The Myrine twisted her face in humor and it suddenly came to Ronny Bronston that she was an extremely handsome woman and must have been a beauty in her youth. She said, “We still have a few signs of it about, especially here in Paphlagonia.”

  The Hippolyte nodded. “More symbols than anything else, even here. At any rate, once again, similar to the Mormons, when our first colony ships landed all property was community owned, save, of course, personal things. Our original ideas of a female-dominated socioeconomic commonwealth proved nonsense within the year. The smallest unit of a life form is that unit which can reproduce itself. In the case of the human race, a woman and a man…”

  The Amazon leader of Lybia twisted her face again.

  “Or, as Citizen Bronston would undoubtedly put it, a man and a woman.”

  Ronny grinned at her suddenly. He would have liked to have known this person better, and doubted that he would ever have the opportunity.

  “At any rate,” the Hippolyte went on, “our experiments revealed that only as a partnership can the relationship reach its ultimates. And so we adapted. We had various advantages over many other Earth colonies, I am sure. In spite of our initial enthusiasms, we were not fools. Our colonists were composed of survival types. Nor were we inadequately equipped. A great many of our society back on the home planet who weren’t able to come, gave their full support of our attempt. We must have been one of the richest colonizations that ever burnt off into the stars. In short, we had the wherewithal to experiment, and the good luck to have one of the richest planets man has yet discovered.

  “And so we prospered. We experimented here, we experimented there. Now you see the result we have thus far attained.”